Why is it so ugly?

[Rudi 0]

Set your TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT to 30 instead of 400. That will cure your blurries.Rudi

[Guest Pilot533]

30?? Thats lower than the fs default setting, how does lowering it help?

[Guest Pilot533]

Maybe Im just asking too much of fs9, Is this texture normal?http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k174/Pilot53_2006/untitled-4.jpgBut I do remember a time when these textures were much clearer, and they still look nothing like this http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k174/Pilot53_2006/ge20063.jpgEven If I let the sim sit paused for 10 mins the textures never clear up, they just stay blurred. Im really pulling my hair out with this one!

[Orlaam 306]

Your first pic isn't showing all the way up for some reason. Where did you take the screen from and maybe I can post from the same spot for perspective. Honestly, I don't think too many people are getting much better performance. When you add that much detail with UT and all the other enhancements, the sim really chokes. The engine is partly to blame as well. Look at how bad FSX looks. They included GE-like detailed textures and it's blurry as h3ll. Most people I find who claim their textures aren't blurry are not really looking at them the way we do. I've seen my share of so-called clear screen shots, but they're blurry.Plus, some screen shots can be taken from certain altitudes or perspectives that hide the blurries.

[Guest SilverCircle]

>Steve Lacey's blog about fixing the blurries does not work. I>have tested what he said on three different machines all with>the same results. Blurries exactly the same on all three. The>last machine is an E6800 with 2 gb of ram and 8800 GTX video>card. He claims that video card memory starvation is also the>cause of the blurries. Well I have plenty of HP and video card>memory and still have them. Everything he has claimed for me>has been false. I set mine to unlimited and it really smokes.>I get the exact same blurries as with very fluid performance>set at unlimited. Honestly I feel it is the code that FS9 is>written. We have had FS9 for 5 years and I have it on a top of>the line machine. It is much faster than it was 5 years ago>but it still has the same exact graphics shortfall it had on a>lower powered machine I had 5 years ago. It must work, sort of. I rarely get any blurries ever when using a locked framerate of 25 and when they appear in some cases, the sim catches up quickly with loading the sharper and more detailed textures. My system is a magnitude less powerful than yours, btw. Problem is that this tweak is hard to test or proove, because it will only result in a (maybe even small) visual difference and cannot be measured by any numbers.It is, at least, worth a try if someone is really burdened by excessive blurries. Of course, there can be a lot of other reasons, like add-ons or background software which slows down disc access or consumes too many cpu cycles (some software does this w/o making the user ever aware of it, because software which runs a lot of stuff in kernel mode won't show the resulting cpu load in taskmanager).But I agree that there is no solution to get completely rid of blurries in FS9. No matter how fast the system is. Switching views quickly or flying at very high speed and low altitude will always result in some blurry textures. But I feel that, at least on my system, it is much less dramatic than the original poster in this thread reported it.

[Guest kittie]

Those pics were of after. The were no blurries, the weather was really bad there that day which made for an intresting landing. Let me know an area you want a screen shot of and I will do one and post for you.:(

[Rudi 0]

I can't explain it. This is observed, not deduced. 400 is too high for my video card. 30 works best for me. The number is a parameter and conveys no expression of the quality of your video card (that is to say you cannot infer that your video card is crappy if the parameter is not set to 400). If 30 is no good, try setting it to 0, then 50, 80, 100, or 200. Higher numbers are not necessarily better. Just try it. After all, you've fiddled with everything else in the fs9.cfg why not this one.

[Guest TomOOO]

Here is my 2p worthI have similar setup (GE-pro, UT-Europe, FS terrain), so have donea lot of optimisation. (the answer may be the last comment here !)First - I believe you have a MIPS bias setting of 5 from yourcfg file. The MIPS controls the sharpness and higher values givea shaper image but result in shimmer. Ie small detail is only1 pixel wide or less - so when the view moves they flash on and off.Try setting MIPS to 8 on your display/hardware tab to look - thisshould be really sharp and non-blurry but will look horrible withshimmer.NextTERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=0TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.5TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4These controls effect the distance from the view point for thesharp non blurry view. They are basically distances from thepoint of view where detail is drawn, and larger values will drawsharp detail further away. There is a but here, since MS did not allow higher TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUSthen there is a multipler called TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS. I usethese values and they give sharpness at a reasonable distance fromthe point of view, but there is no point going higher than the MIPSbias allows . I understand that the TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS isthe main control at 9.5 miles (don't know the units MS used), andthis is multipled to 4 times this value. Above this value a lesssharp region is drawn with the EXTENDED_RADIUS.Of course, it does depend on the speed of CPU and the fsb of yourmachine, and how fast things can be read from disk (PATA/SATA &spin speed of disk), and looking at your specs you could usea larger TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS (maybe 5). If you set highernumbers then more work must be done and you trade a blurry distancewith stutter as data throughput gets overwhelmed. So set the multipler to a higher number until you get stutter at highspeeds. (there are other tweaks you can do to improve this, but letsfix your main problem first).The next thing is that I note that you have TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVELset to 19. This defines the level of detail and you have yoursset to 19 which is a 76 meter resolution. I had assumed this wasset during GE install, and should set this value to 21 whichgives you a 19 meter level of detail. I sort of thought thatthis would only effect my terrain mesh but found it does effectthe scenery detail as well - so I keep my at 21. CHANGE THISto 21 and see if this solves the problem and makes thescenery sharp. I have changed this value to lower values, ie19 which is my terrain mesh detail and the view was horribleand blurry, so I instantly set it back to 21. Note you cannotuse higher numbers as FS2004 does not render detail to a higherlevel of detail.Below (maybe it will stay), a picture with some older settingsof the TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS where it was set to 0. NowI get more terrain as sharp image with a value of 4. You seehow the MIPS and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS have conspired to makethe slightly more distant terrain less detailed. I get 4 timesas much sharp texture now compared to this picture.Hope this helps.RegardsTom

[Guest Pilot533]

I have vertex level set to 19, btw i am also using fs terrain. I tried setting extended levels to 5 and i think it may have helped, what is the max value fs will take for that setting?

[Guest TomOOO]

Please set TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL value to 21 - not 19this will give you a 19m resolution. This value is not theresolution but a setting - you want 21.ThanksTom

[Guest Pilot533]

Im sorry I wrote the wrong number, it is set at 21. What is the max value for extended levels that fs will take?

[TC1 0]

Mike I hope that you can get your problem fixed, but I want to thank all those who posted a response. By reading through the posts, I ran FSM and fixed a duplicate texture/scenery problem; increased the terrain error factor; lowered my framerates, terrain default & ext. radius; decreased terrain extended levels; and finally removed UT res. roads. Thank you all, my system is working the best it has in a year.Tom

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"I mean what exactly is fsgs going to be able to do?"FS-GS has the bandwidth to go thru your system bit by bit, and reconfigure it to be optimized for MSFS. I've never used FS-GS, but in my earlier days as a WAN Manager, I dealt with many similar issues. If all else has failed, and you've tried every tweak in the book, you need someone who can look at your system closely. Ask yourself how much you earn an hour. Then figure how much time you've spent trying to no avail to fix your issue. Makes FS-GS seem worth it, doesn't it?I don't know the person behind the show at FS-GS, but I know supporting issues on a system takes experience, patience and bandwidth. From all accounts the soul running the show at FS-GS has that. My hunch is you have some third party process that's competing with MSFS for your system's resources. But I don't have the bandwidth to prove that hunch, FS-GS has.Hope that helps, and please keep us posted...-John

[Guest Pilot533]

Thanks John, Im certainly considering it, but I want to try everything I can first.

[Guest Pilot533]

btw, kittie if you could take a shot at kslc facing south at about 9000 feet catching the terrain textures I would really appreciate it.